FBI arrests former Qualcomm engineer on child porn charges

San Diego  A former Qualcomm software engineer suspected of possessing child pornography was arrested Friday morning in his home, FBI officials said Monday.

An information technology security engineer at the global telecommunications corporation told the FBI in February that Daniel Anthony Nemanich, 42, of San Diego was accessing child pornography on the company’s network from home.

The security engineer downloaded onto a CD some of the videos Nemanich had on his computer and gave it to an FBI agent, according to court documents.

Agents searched Nemanich’s home later that month and found thousands of videos and pictures of child pornography, some involving girls under the age of 10, on his computers and other media devices.

Nemanich told agents during the search that he would download the pornography and delete it shortly afterward, according to court records.

He was not arrested until Friday. He is being held in the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego and made his initial appearance in federal court Monday afternoon, said Debra Hartman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Nemanich’s bail was set at $50,000, Hartman said.

Qualcomm terminated Nemanich shortly after the pornography was detected by the company’s IT security team, a spokeswoman for Qualcomm said Monday.

The investigation of Nemanich by the FBI’s Cyber Crime Squad was conducted under the agency’s Innocent Images National Initiative, an effort to combat Internet child pornography.